Quality of Concept Art for the Game Industry

[jurffy]

Hi,

I want to find out what quality is expected of concept art model sheets created that will be made in 3D. Can somebody direct me to some examples? I'm not sure how detailed they should be, including the complexity of the poses, and I'd think that'd vary from company to company.

Thank you.

[Seedling]

It does vary. Sorry, I don't know where you can go to see examples, but there is other info that may be of interest to you in the games industry thread linked to in my sig.

[drummingpariah]

Hi,

I want to find out what quality is expected of concept art model sheets created that will be made in 3D. Can somebody direct me to some examples? I'm not sure how detailed they should be, including the complexity of the poses, and I'd think that'd vary from company to company.

Thank you.

What genre are you interested in? The difference in detail levels from a Realtime Strategy game to a First Person Shooter will be huge (compare 50 polys to 10000+ per model). A good place to start looking and getting ideas for a portfolio is http://www.lowpolycoop.com/. What tools are you using? Are you familiar with Maya, Blender, or any other suites? You want to make your 2d concept art with the 3d model in mind. If you were to create the 3d model, what would you want included in the sketch? There is a lot more information than you can possibly include, and every 3d modeller has a different workflow. Personally, I scan in a front/side/top sketch and scale it to the appropriate size, then do a 3d outline using basic poly shapes in blender. From there I add in the skeleton and add detail gradually, so several sketches, along with items that a character would be carrying or moving parts on a machine are very important to have detailed out.

[Coinpurse]

talking about Orthos?
Basically an Ortho is what you just described, its a 2D "blueprint" of a character or creature that is used as reference for modelers.
There are actually a lot of artists here that post those up in dumps or even in SB's. I couldn't directly link you to a website,
but there is a member here by the name of openanewworld (http://www.conceptart.org/forums/showthread.php?t=82679) actually does a fantastic job with Orthos.

Wouldn't recommend posing the character though.
The purpose of an ortho view is to act as a reference spreadsheet for modelers to use.
Posing the character only takes away from certain parts blocked by either arm or leg in which needs to be modeled.
Not only does this waste time (deadlines), but it also can cause the character to come out with inaccurate proportions or anatomy flaws.
Posing them face, front and back, gives the modeler more to work with and easier to distinguish parts.

hope that helped a bit :spam:

[jurffy]

Seedling: Thanks, a big interesting read it is indeed! =p

drummingpariah: Neat page u linked..Yes I've used Maya a little, I'm trying to become proficient with it now. I guess what I've been talking about are called orthos as mentiond by BOOM!

BOOM!: Yea those are the model sheets I'm talking about. So I'm curious then.. in a production workflow.. is it even required to illustrate 3/4 views? If it's going to be created in 3D then orthos are all you need, correct? Then what are the uses of posed characters? How are they used? Do they draw 3/4 and action poses first, to figure out how the character moves, then later on create orthos?

Thanks guys!

[Magic Man]

3/4 views are required to give a better feel of the character's persona, but they aren't strictly required. But then again, depending on who you work for, neither are orthographics, really depends on how much artistic autonomy is afforded to the modellers.

Orthographics are pretty important though, a lot of modelers are technicians rather than types who want to take artistic licence.

Keep the orthographics as simple as possible, but with as much information as possible so that the modelers know what they're doing. Its not really required that they are beautifully rendered, but it does give more a visual guideline if they are rendered out nicely.

They can just be linework like car blueprints if you like, but as you'd know if you've done some car modelling, there is only so much information you can glean from them until you need some real reference pics from 3/4 angles to really progress.

Here's a good example of a fairly tight orthographic:

http://www.kalescentstudios.com/images/LRG_Mod_Fei.jpg